On september 23,
2002, M. Jeremy Rifkin, head of the Foundation on Economic Trends, published in the paper
"Le Monde" (dated sept. 24) an article where he said,
in short :

that Europe
was engaged on the path of "pulling out of the fossil fuel
era", that is that there was a voluntary and progressive
renunciation to these energies (coal, oil, gas) in the Old Continent,

that hydrogen,
whose combustion produces only water vapour, was the energy of
the future.

Following this
article, I sent a letter to this newspaper, that got partially
published in the reader's section. Suppressing part of my letter
did not induce a major twist of my conclusions, but did eliminate
some nuances or incidental purposes, so on my website - where
room is not a problem - I considered that the reader might as
well read the whole text that I sent !

*****version
sent to "Le Monde"*****

Mr. Rifkin is
a man whose optimism is most welcome, since discussing our energy
and climate future without being sometimes doubtful is an exercise
that only the president of the IEA is able to do. His impetus and his "energy"
are therefore a pleasure to be seen.

Alas, neither
his optimism, nor mine, that can also be important sometimes,
have the power to change the world as it is. If hydrogen is very
abundant in the universe, our planet is an exception : hydrogen
does exist in the native form on Earth, and collecting that of
the sun would raise a couple of practical problems.

To use hydrogen
on earth, we need to produce this "clean" gas out of
something else (this "something else" might very well
not be clean at all), which means that hydrogen is just an energy
vector, as electricity (that might, depending on opinions and
fashions of the moment, be considered as "clean" or
not, definitions being able to very from one person to another).
"Well to wheel" analysis (you can investigate either
with the IFP or .... the association
française de l'hydrogène) conclude that if this hydrogen is produced
by cracking natural gas, which is presently the case, overall
resulting CO2 emissions make the process
worse than burning directely petrol in a car.

If this hydrogen
is produced through electrolysis, the emissions are then those
of electricity generation, that could therefore be generated only
with water, wind, solar, or nuclear plants in order not to emit
greenhouse
gases.
Let's discuss the case of wind power : "hydrogenating"
all French cars would require the buildup of one million windmills
to get 600 TWh,
and that does not take into account the energy - certainly not
negligible - required to store it (a simple compression to 300
bars consumes already 20% of the inital hydrogen ; liquefaction
requires 50%) and transport it.

Similar calculations
show that solar energy is also not able to meet the required hydrogen production with the present level
of mobility, so there remain hydroelectricity, that would require
a multiplication by 10 to 15 of the dams in France, or nuclear,
that would require a doubling of the number of reactors in France.

At last, when
Mr. Rifkin indicates that Europe is engaged in the fight of "pulling
out of the fossil fuel era", BP and Shell leading the way,
I think that he is definitely very optimistic ! The only "pulling
out" of something that has been anounced in Europe is relative
to nuclear energy in Germany and in Belgium, what tends to make
the fight against climate
change
rather more
arduous,
and the european commissioner in charge of transportation has
"foreseen" that our dependancy on imports for fossil
fuels will jump from 50% today to 70% in 20 years. As far as "pulling
out" is concerned, I've seen better !

M. Rifkin may
have wanted to do well, but because he ignores the magnitudes
of the processes, he ends up doing something not desirable : maintaining
false hopes.